Partying ways

• Kaytee Dix, Grade 11
• Short Story
• 2006

Partying Ways
By Kaytee Dix, Year 11, Urrbrae Agricultural High School

It was weightless but it lay like a brick in the palm of my hand. If I hadn't been staring straight at it, I doubt I would have known it was even there. It was so small, so insignificant, so like Tyson to give it to me.
'It'll make everything better.' He had grinned smugly as he reached across the table, littered with cans and bottles and cigarette ash, and handed me the pill.
That was five minutes ago.
Could it really make everything better?
I don't know what it is. Maybe my upbringing. Maybe all those warnings I received from my ever-wise magazines. Maybe those pamphlets Mum left in the toilet, a little too obviously by the way, waiting for the curious hands of one certain teenager to pick them up and give them a good read.
Whatever it was, my conscience was screaming at me not to take that pill. It was going against everything I've ever believed in. All I could do was stare at it, postponing that torturous conversation with Tyson, the questions he'd ask as to why it wasn't already down my throat and into my system. To hear the truth that, yes, I am scared.
'Ash?' Tyson leans forward to look at me properly. He pauses, studying my face. 'You know, you actually have to put it into your mouth for it to work?'
'I know,' I say, my conscience having a vicious battle with my pride.
This was a social-life threatening disaster!
Take the pill and fit in. Don't take the pill... And then what?
What would happen to me if I didn't? Exile from the A-List? Rejection from Tyson and Steph and life of popularity I've learned to love? Labeled loser forever?
'Tyson, don't pressure her.' Steph's sitting beside him, a cigarette elegantly poised between her fingers.
Don't do that, Steph. Don’t try to protect me.
'I'm not pressuring her!' Tyson says, defensively.
'Oh please! Don't act so innocent! You're practically ramming it down her throat, for goodness sake!' Steph takes a drag from her cigarette. She's strictly a social smoker.
Or so she says.
‘Get lost, Steph,' Tyson mutters. 'I am not.'
'Tyson, can't you see she doesn't want to take it? Look at her.' She points her cigarette at me.
He looks to me, angry with Steph, and maybe a little with me as well for not instantly jumping to his defense.
I close my eyes tightly, ignoring the lurching of my stomach. Then, in a moment of complete surrender, my conscience defeated, I raise my hand, the pill cupped inside, throw my head back and swallow it whole.
Tyson grins at Steph, victorious, and leans back, watching me proudly. She makes a face and goes back to her cigarette.
Welcome to the life of popularity, past the velvet rope and the red curtains, to a place in which sacrifices have to be made in order to keep friends.